THE PLOT ACTION-the sequence of events as they took place
THE PLOT ACTION-the sequence of events as they took place It raises two questions; the question of directness,and the question of necessity. 1.Directness.Let us first define our terms. Action is direct which, in every complication, moves toward the crucial situation. Every other kind is indirect in greater or lesser degree. These qualities of plot action must be carefully distinguished from the order of events, with which it is easy to confuse them. The plot action is determined by the selectionof events to be depicted; the order of the selected events, while more or less influenced by the selection, is a distinct and secondary feature. Almost any story will reveal this distinction, but Balzac's A Seashore Dramadoes so with exceptional sharpness. The student will please analyze it carefully, in the light of the following comments. The plot action here is doubly indirect. It begins with the reveries and gamboling of the artist narrator and Pauline on the Brittany coast, and through the first thousand words these persons seem to be the chief characters. Then the wretched fisherman suddenly appears, and for the space of over three thousand words his past and present misery unfold. Here at last, the reader thinks, is the hero; and the story is about his poverty, his filial loyalty, and the solitude of his dull existence. But no! The Man of the Vow at last shoots into view, and the tale the fisherman tells about him makes us forget all else. When this terrible seashore drama has unrolled, the narrative leaps back across the years to the artist and Pauline; and the closing movement portrays the effect of the drama upon them. Here, to be sure, is a definite arrangement of episodes. But the order itself is quite distinct from the matter ordered. The three acts, as it were, might contain exactly the same incidents and yet relate them in other sequences. Thus, the story might open with the artist and Pauline meeting the fisherman. During the mock barter over his lobster and crab, all the exuberance of the summer visitors' sheer physical joy and all their summer fancies might be brought out, though doubtless not so successfully as in the arrangement which Balzac has chosen. Also, the discovery of Cambremer on his granite bowlder might occur in the midst of the artist's first encounter with the poor fisherman; and the fisherman might tell his own history while telling that of the Man with the Vow. (The story would gain much by bringing Cambremer into it sooner.) No such manipulation affects the plot action. At most, it only obscures or clarifies it. To alter the plot's dramatic quality, you must delete episodes or insert others. This is remarkably easy inA Seashore Drama; inasmuch as neither of the first two movements contain integral parts of the central plot. Strictly speaking, both of them contribute only to the atmosphere and the philosophical interpretation. They are pure intensifiers. To state this in the language of the definitions above laid down: they are •indirect action, inasmuch as neither the artist nor Pauline nor the fisherman do anything which makes Cambremer drown his profligate son. a.Two indirections. Two varieties of indirect action are conspicuous; first, that which introduces secondary complications (sub-plots) in order to reach the climax; and, secondly, that which proceeds by developing a character in a manner that conceals the line of action from the reader for a while. Gouverneur Morris' story, Sapphire, contains indirect action in the form of a sub-plot, which is peculiarly unsuccessful inasmuch as the minor action almost overwhelms the major. The title indicates that the benevolent liar, Miss Tennant, is the dominant character and consequently that the events centering about and springing from her fibs constitute the plot. But the adventures of David Larkin, particularly his love affair with Another Lady, do much more than bring out Miss Tennant's embarrassments; they make one forget these altogether. A Circle in the Wateris doubly indirect action. It introduces a secondary complication (which, in this case, can scarcely be called a sub-plot) and it also proceeds by developing the leading character, Tedham, while suppressing the plot action in the earlier movement. Mr. and Mrs. March extraneously make difficult the convict's home-coming and his meeting his daughter. Tedham's reestablishment in his daughter's affections and in society could, so far as the dramatic necessities of the affair are concerned, have been accomplished without most of the elaborate debates and interpositions of the Marches. While these do figure in the action, they serve chiefly to accentuate the public hostility toward ex-convicts and the deeper charity of the Marches, which feebly struggles to masquerade under the guise of sternness. The two indirections shoot through the entire narrative; and their joint effect is especially powerful in the first movement, which runs on through fifteen hundred words without betraying anything about the leading characters and the complication. b.The use of direct and of indirect action. The illustrations we have just considered suggest perhaps that only direct action is altogether praiseworthy. But this is not true, though it is much more nearly so in the out- and-out character story than elsewhere. Which method is better depends upon the particular effect sought; and the fundamental principle which decides its fitness is the principle of integration. Thus, if we were writing a thematic story, we should not ask ourselves which events in our material are the most exciting, or which rush . on to the climax most swiftly. Rather should we seek those which more uniformly and most vividly illuminate the theme. And if, again, we were composing an adventure story whose supreme thrill sprang from pure surprise, we should not choose a plot structure with an eye to its character drawing or its moral or anything else save that startling denouement. We may sum up these observations in several practical rules: Like every other factor, episodes may be intensifiers of whatever single effect the writer aims at. Now, of course, all those which are integral parts of the plot must be reported and suitably developed, lest the action be vague. So the technical problem reduces to two questions: How far may the plot events be elaborated beyond the degree at which they make clear the plot action? And to what extent may one introduce and develop incidents which do not belong to the plot action? The answer is simple enough in form, but hard to apply. Only such events may be introduced as heighten the single effect; and they may be developed only up to the point at which they begin to obscure the plot action either by interrupting it or else by diverting interest from it to themselves. Let us suppose that you have a plot whose most interesting feature is not the complication nor the atmosphere but, say, the hero's lack of humor. This defect you wish to bring out most vividly, making it yield the story's single effect. In looking over the essential incidents of the bald plot, you find that, while they reveal the trait, they do not make the most of it. They give the fact but not the thrill of it. What then shall you do? Well, first of all, see whether some of the essential plot incidents cannot be elaborated so as to produce the thrill. If they can, you are fortunate. If they cannot, invent a few isodes which perfectly characterize your hero's mirth- 'and add them to the narrative at the point where -' they are clear, relevant, and harmless to the continuity of the action. Where is this point? Occasionally you will find it at a lull in the main action where the latter shifts its trend. But, nine times out of ten, it is at the story's opening.Not by chance nor by any dead technical formality does it happen thus, but rather because an event so placed does not break in upon the plot action at all and, furthermore, because it fixes the character in advance, thereby relieving the reader of the task of discovering him. As the majority of stories require some measure of secondary intensifying episodes, the opening assumes a tremendous technical importance, of which we shall soon hear more. And those editors who read only the first page or two of a story manuscript seldom err in rejecting a contribution that does not impress them favorably in that brief space. The length of intensifying plot events that are placed at the opening is pretty easily controlled, but that of interpolated material is not. The reason for this is that every episode which enters into the texture of a plot must, for the drama's sake, hang together smoothly with its antecedents and its consequents, and a certain unpredictable amount of detail is involved in making the two transitions. Unfortunately, the ease and brevity of these depend so much upon the particular events that no useful rule, nor even suggestion, can be given about them. The writer must fall back upon the general principle. c.The two typical errors in plot action. An episode may violate either the first or the second clause of the general principle and thus give rise to two kinds of faulty action, which we may name: Irrelevancyand Over-intensification. i. Irrelevancy. Many writers admit matter to their pages 'because it is really connected with the story' or 'because, being connected with it in fact, it will lend a desirable air of reality to the tale'. These, alas, are fundamentally wrong reasons, and they have ruined whole libraries of would-be literature. The genuineness of such a connection is not the slightest argument in favor of introducing the matter. It would be, if you were a scientist investigating a real person and his affairs. But, as an artist striving to exhibit some single effect of a dramatic incident, you must suppress everything that does not make for this end. If you do not, you will produce things like a recent story entitled The Crime in Jedidiah Peeble's House,' which is (unintentionally) a most solemn warning against the sin of realistic irrelevancy. Its theme seems to be something like this: 'A criminal is relentlessly pursued by public vengeance and cannot hope to escape it'. The single effect proper to this is, of course, the stern joy of a more than personal justice, mingled perhaps with awe before the spectacle of Fate and the Furies working invisibly through the common people. The main plot action is admirably simple: a fleeing murderer, resting behind a hedge far from the scene of his crime, overhears some people talking about him and his past and his pursuers and his inevitable capture; as they stroll off, the sunset pours its blood-red light over him, and the sky holds up before his terror- stricken eyes a great cloud shaped like the head of the venerable old man whom he has slain. There you have an incident which Hawthorne would have delighted in and exalted to a magnificent, sombre allegory. But, in the author's hands, it has been ruined by the chatter of the wayfarers. Their private affairs, so far as I perceive, have no inner connection with the theme nor with the action; nevertheless they have been spun out and out and still out until the reader is forced to believe that, in some subterranean way, they are of the plot. More than a thousand words are wasted in talk about the women's dresses, their opinions about husbands, the old gentleman's seed store, his pet rabbits, and the love affair of his impecunious grandson. And all the while, behind the hedge, sits the murderer drinking in this dilute, irrelevant conversation. Poor fellow! If he is bored half as much as the reader is, the punishment exceeds his crimp. ii. Over-intensification.This fault, unlike the first, is one to which very good writers are susceptible. Indeed, it is the supreme literary virtue running wild. He who clearly perceives his theme, its best single effect, and the plot action is most likely to be carried away by them and to overdraw some significant feature. Mau- passant becomes, at times, a victim of literary speed mania and strikes a pace that no narrative drama can hold. Poe often lays on horrors too thickly. Meredith is thrust out of the story-world by the avalanche of his subtle refinements. And so on, even unto the latest of the great, 0. Henry, who cannot always control his passion for topsy-turvy surprises. A fairly clear case of over-intensification occurs in Richard Harding Davis' entertaining psychological story, AQuestion of Latitude.'Its theme is put into the mouth of the English Coaster, who, speaking of the Congo country, says: 'It doesn't matter a damn what a manbrings here, what his training was, what heis. The thing is too strong for him. . . . He loses shame, loses reason; becomes cruel, weak, degenerate'. This the plot action illustrates. An eminently moral and well bred Bostonian newspaper man goes to reform the jungle, and the jungle deforms him—but not so seriously that we cannot laugh cynically at his plight, and marvel at the author's mercilessly accurate delineation of human nature in the raw. Now, in order to show the bruteforce of the tropical wildernesses in full swing, Davis does exactly the right things; first, he makes Everett, the reformer, the incarnation of culture and the proprieties; and, secondly, by anecdote, debate, and pure description, he portrays the Congo country in all its vileness. Every word of all this is pertinent and interesting. The trouble is that it is too interesting and too long. It outshines the story of Everett's infatuation, which is the climax and by all odds the most entertaining part of the plot. The first five hundred words present us with as minute a portrait of the hero as is possible in brief fiction. (0. Henry would have given as accurate a onein seventy-. five words.) Then follow about twelve hundred words of conversation on shipboard about the unamiable habits of West Coast savages and the corruption which the African sun works under the European's skull. The next eight hundred words report Everett's harrowing first experiences; and here the plot action gets under way, somewhere around Word No. 2,400, which is at least a thousand words too late. d.The formalist fallacy. The assertion has often been made that 'the short story is Maupassant' ; which is a eulogistic way of saying that the pure direct plot action alone is the perfect pattern. This view, however, can be maintained only by assuming that the one legitimate single effect is that of dramatic velocity. Such a presupposition runs counter to the taste of most artists and readers and is, for this reason alone, indefensible inasmuch as literary ideals are essentially a matter of taste. Few of us are so narrow that we find enjoyment only in such swift catastrophes as The Piece of String, The Necklace and Little Soldier. Life is full of gentler griefs and lazier merriment and more languorous romance which claim our tears and laughter no less strongly and which cannot be told adequately with Maupassant's lightning artistry. The pure dramatic story of the French type gives us the dizzying effect of terrific speed. Its scenes and catastrophes flit past asthe landscape past a racing automobile. Probably no other sensation is quite so intense, unless it is that of tumbling from an aeroplane. But there are many other kinds of intensity, and every well- balanced reader likes to change the flavor of his fiction occasionally. These other intensities are not all attained by swift, direct action. The quality accentuated in the story's single effect may be any one of a large number which reveal themselves in slower stirrings. They are especially prominent in three classes of stories: The thematic story commonly requires indirect action; because the development of the theme tends to follow the argumentative order of its proof, and the steps of the latter are seldom connected dramatically. The psychologicalcharacter story of the analytical type often calls for indirect action, especially when the forces at work in the character are either highly complicated or are interesting because of their surprising solution. In the former case the pattern of action resembles that of the story with sub-plots, the minor movemeliti being those of the various interplaying instincts, prejudices, and appetites. iii. Thecomplicationstory employs indirect action in proportion to its intricacy and to the importance of the solution. The pure surprise, such as the detective and the mystery tale, usually is indirect. In all other cases, however, direct action is better, particularly in the ordinary character story. Such a story depicts conduct in a crisis, and this is never clearer and stronger than when told in its own simple terms, undecorated by attendant circumstances and not refracted through some other character's experience. To interpolate events or commentaries between the items of the pure plot may indeed interpretthe latter gloriously, but it blurs the picture more or less, coloring the action with preachment. 2.Necessity.One of the most hotly debated questions in the older theories of the drama had to do with the nature and bounds of dramatic necessity. To what extent may the playwright allow accidents to happen on his stage? The weight of authority has always been against his allowing it at all. And this opinion has come over, quite naturally, into the theory of dramatic fiction, and today prevails there. As Brander Matthews neatly puts it, "fiction dealt first with the Impossible, then with the Improbable, next with the Probable, and now at last with the Inevitable". And in The Story-Teller's Art Charity Dye lays down the orthodox rule, which we must quote for the second time: "In a well-appointed story, not only must everything that happens seem to grow naturally out of the situation, but it must seem to be the only thing that could happen under the circumstances." However sound this may be in the field of drama, it is little short of preposterous as a commandment to the fiction writer. It could have been advanced only by persons whose interest in a certain type of literature hid everything else from their understanding. As a criterion of artistic merit it fails miserably, and as a guide in writing it is a sheer impossibility. Not one in a hundred good short stories produces so much as the fleeting impression of inevitability; and I do not believe that more than one author in a hundred strives for that effect. Those who do so, moreover, fall far short of it. Howells, for instance, aspires toward a psychological fatalism in which, as we have heard him say, the events of a story are the mere effects of the particular character whom the writer is exhibiting. As effects, they must of course appear as the necessary consequences of their causes. But how often do they in Howells' stories? Or, again, how often in James' and Mrs. Wharton's? I must confess that I have not experienced so much as the illusion of inevitability there, except inThe Liarand in that marvelous novelette, Ethan Frome. This is not proof that the ideal of dramatic necessity is wrong. It is only an argumentum ad hominem. But practically it is as good as a demonstration; for where such masters of analysis as Howells, James, and Wharton fail we wrongly urge others to rush in. Impersonal evidence of the same import is not lacking, though; and it is most accessible in the ideals of short story. So long as we are trying to fix upon nothing more than the marks of a good short story, we have no right to look beyond the virtues of dramatic narrative with a single effect. We ought not select a theme or a type of material, or a literary style within such narrative and find therein the 'essence' of the ' genre. The 'essence' is not there, any more than all human beauty is resident in the smile of a lovely face that strikes our fancy. To think that it is, is to perpetrate what the logicians term the fallacy of accident. It is . to confuse form and matter and to exalt the latter to the level of the first. Or it is to mistake an intensity for the quality which is intense. It may well be that drama attains its supremely enthralling moment when it reveals a human soul triumphantly asserting itself over circumstances which threaten to stifle its virtues and pervert its noblest instincts. But, even so, it does not follow that whatever falls short of this high pitch is not genuine drama. One might as well argue that only the most vivid blue is true blue, and only the loudest note true music. The combination of persons and events which makes dramatic action intense does not make it dramatic. To attain the intensity, the matter must first have acquired the specific quality. Let us now apply these dry, abstract propositions to the integrative intensifying of the short story. Dramatic n3s.ty is only one of many devices for perfectiTrthe singe effect. It is not an ideal of the short story, as such; its usefulness is limited to a relatively small class of character plots, namely those which depict nothing but the operations of sharply defined mental types. Its employment elsewhere probably does more harm than good. EXERCISES The anecdote below is highly ambiguous. Give it as many reasonable interpretations as you can. Then amplify it so variously as to develop in turn (1) a broadly comic complication; (2) a pathetic character story; and (3) a moral tragedy. Charged with intoxication, a man dressed in a Santa Claus costume caused a stir today in the Adams Street Police Court. " What is this?" said the Magistrate, as he gazed on the figure before him. "Santa Claus in a police court? I thought he was too busy with getting things ready for Christmas to spend his valuable time in this place?" Santa Claus appeared bewildered and muttered something that sounded like too much Christmas, but was unable to say any more. Policeman Joseph Kane told the Magistrate that he had found the man, Louis Kane, at Fulton and Willoughby streets flourishing a bell and requesting the charity of passersby for Christmas. He had a cauldron, into which contributions were dropped. The policeman said he approached Kane and cautioned him not to be so enthusiastic about the boiling pot. "But," said Santa, "I am a member of the Volunteers of America and must earn my salary." "You're drunk," said the policeman. " Well, I did go into a saloon," the policeman quoted him as saying, "to get some string to tie my whiskers on, as they were falling off, and I must admit I did take about `two fingers.' The man and the pot were taken to the Adams street police station, where "Santa" spent the night, and was discharged today by the Magistrate with a reprimand. As Kane left the court he was heard to mutter, "Never again!" 2. a. Construct a humorous complication plot out of the following, using the judge as the butt. b. Make a thematic tragedy plot of it, building around `red tape' or else the cruel and empty dignity of the law. C. J. McGuire, a letter carrier, entered the Yorkville Court yesterday with a special delivery letter. He refused to remove his hat from his head when ordered to do so by Court Attendant Rasmussin. He said: "I am only obeying orders. I am not allowed to take off any part of my uniform while on duty." Magistrate Breen wanted to know whether the postman couldn't strain a point in favor of courtesy, but McGuire, who seemed to be a stickler for departmental rules, said this was impossible. "I am only obeying orders. I am not allowed to take off any part of my uniform while on duty", he said, mechanically. Having found out that the man to whom he had to deliver the letter was stationed in the Men's Night Court, McGuire started to walk out. "Be sure you keep your hat on when you go into the Night Court", Magistrate Breen called out. Whereupon McGuire answered in a monotone: "I am only obeying orders. I am not allowed to take off any part of my uniform while on duty." 3. In each of the following stories discover (a) the items of the direct action; (b) those of indirect action (if any); © irrelevant episodes, and (d) over-intensified episodes. Explain each case of © and (d). Balzac, H.—La Grande Breteche. Poe—The Gold Bug. Kipling—The Man Who Would Be King Coppee—A Voluntary Death. 0. Henry—Lost on Dress Parade(in The Four Million).London, J.—A Day's Lodging(in Love of Life).Benefield, B.—OkiJohnnie (Scribner's, Dec., 1911) Byron, T. P.—Loaded Dice (Everybody's, Jan., 1912). Osbourn, Lloyd—Deity the Detrimental (Everybody's, Aug., 1910). 4. While reading each of the following stories, note (a) the point in the narrative where you think you foresee the outcome; (b) the point where you revise this guess, and © the accuracy of the guess. James, H.—Owen Wingrave. Deland, Margaret—The Child's Mother (in Old Chester Tales). Kipling, R.—His Wedded Wife (in Plain Tales from the Hills). London, J.—The Unexpected (in Love of Life). Henry, 0.—A Blackjack Bargainer (in Whirligigs). By what handling of the action is suspense maintained in each story? Which handling succeeds best?